Chapter Four

I’ve never had a problem I couldn’t make worse.

—True story

“ Seven ?” Michael asked. Of all the things he’d imagined she would say, robbing banks while still in elementary school had not made the list.

“Seven,” she confirmed. She picked up the paperwork and began filling it out.

“Seven sheets to the wind because you’re a lush?” he guessed, unable to process her statement. Trying to rob a bank drunk seemed plausible. He’d certainly done worse in an inebriated state.

“Seven years old,” she clarified. “Before that, it was convenience stores.” She checked a box. “Pawn shops.” Check. “Liquor stores.” Check, check, check. “But my stepfather wanted bigger scores, so banks it was.”

Michael stared at her for a long moment, trying to decide whether to believe her or not. He’d determined early on that she was a little off her rocker. Maybe she was more off the thing than he’d imagined. Perhaps she’d taken a sledgehammer to it and used it for firewood.

“Iz,” he said, trying to be as gentle as possible, “can I call you Iz? You’re hardly intimidating now. How did you manage to rob banks at seven?” And why had it never made the evening news? A story like that would have been on 60 Minutes , for sure. Or, at the very least, the National Enquirer.

She stared back at him, and he figured it was fair. He’d done it first, those eyes so mesmerizing he had a hard time not staring. “Like I said, I was forced.”

He laughed under his breath and scooted farther down in his chair. “Okay, I’ll bite. We have way more in common than I thought. Another long story. Only I certainly didn’t start at seven.”

“You robbed banks?”

“Let’s just say, someone was controlling me. And my friends. But enough about me…”

“No, this is really interesting,” she said, trying to distract him. She lowered the pen and leaned forward to encourage him.

He was easy, but he wasn’t that easy. “How old were you the first time you assisted your stepfather?”

She picked up the pen again, her lower lip jutting in disappointment. “Five.”

Every muscle in his body tensed despite her charming pout, but he did everything in his power not to show his knee-jerk reaction. “And this has something to do with an ability?”

She pressed her lips together. It hardly detracted from their fullness. “Yes.”

“So, you give people orders, and they just follow them?”

“Yes. Everyone.” She glanced up at him. “Everyone but you.”

“Why?”

She scoffed. “You tell me. No one has ever been able to disobey my orders. Ever.”

That was strange, but he’d been referring to the ability. “I mean, why would anyone follow your orders?”

“I don’t know. They just always have. Since I was little.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Anything I wanted them to.”

He nodded in understanding, seeing before she explained the fragile circumstances that could create.

“Do you know what a two-year-old with that kind of power is capable of? One who has no sense of right and wrong? No sense of morality?” She shook her head and went back to the paperwork. “My poor mom.”

“How did she deal with it?”

A small smile crept across her pretty face as she worked. “Headphones.”

He laughed.

She joined him. “We literally learned sign language and used it for most things until I was old enough to know right from wrong. But even then… I put that poor woman through hell.” Her smile faded as she thought back. “That’s how my mom met my stepdad. He had a Deaf aunt. She was teaching sign language classes in a town near us, and my mom took one—with me in tow, of course. Her nephew showed up one night to help her with the projector and spotted my mom. She was such a beauty.”

“I can imagine.”

She shook out of her thoughts. “They hit it off, and the rest is history.”

“So, it’s auditory? The sign language didn’t work?”

“I couldn’t mesmerize at first because I didn’t know how to use it to get what I wanted. Later, even the sign language became an issue for my mom. I was incorrigible.”

He blinked in surprise. “You can give orders using sign language, too?”

“Yes, but I’m not very good. I once told a Deaf boy to stop being rude. At least, I thought I did. He stripped naked in front of me. Apparently, hand placement is very important in ASL.”

He rubbed his mouth to hide his grin. “And your biological father?”

“He was never in the picture. My mom never told me what happened, but she ended up marrying my stepfather when I was around four.”

“And he saw a way to make a quick buck,” Michael said, seeing all too clearly how that would’ve scarred her from a very young age.

She nodded. “When my mother found out, she tried to take me and leave.” Her brows slid together, ostensibly in response to a difficult question on the papers in her lap, but she wasn’t fooling him. He spotted the telltale wetness between her lashes. She cleared her throat and added, “He killed her for it. For me. To keep control of the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

Michael didn’t move, didn’t speak, lest he give away the dark emotions churning inside him. He gave her a moment before questioning her further. He could definitely see why Elwyn had chosen Izzy. She would be a powerful ally in the coming tribulations, but the last thing Michael wanted was for this lovely woman to get mixed up in their lives. Their very dangerous, incredibly volatile lives.

“Did he tell you he killed her?” he asked, hopeful the man had lied and just abducted Izzy, leaving her mother alive and searching for her daughter for over two decades. It was better than the alternative.

She gripped the pen so hard her knuckles turned white. “He didn’t have to. I saw the whole thing.”

Damn it. “I’m sorry, Iz.”

She glanced up in surprise. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, that’s not something you just get over.”

“True, but I have Emma now. I can get over anything if it means keeping her safe.”

His admiration of her knew no bounds. She was a badass. “What happened to him? Your stepfather?”

“I eventually escaped and went to the police. I told them everything. Well, not how we robbed banks and such, but everything about the murder. They investigated and arrested him three days later. He’s been rotting in prison in North Carolina ever since.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten. From there, I was in and out of so many foster homes, I became a walking cliché.”

He shook his head. “There is no way you could ever be a walking cliché. Still, that was very brave.”

“Not really. He had no leverage over me apart from his paltry threats. My ex was much smarter when it came to such things.”

“In what way?”

She smiled sadly. “He had leverage. And he used it well. But he wasn’t like that at first.” Her gaze slid past him as the memories resurfaced. “He was so kind and attentive, and I…I had no one at the time. I was living on the streets when he saw me one night, and…it’s complicated.”

He didn’t want to push her. How her ex had groomed her to be his doormat was not important for the time being. “So, there’s an entire chapter of the Bandits that knows about your ability?” How many men would he have to take down?

“No. He never told them. He wanted me and my ability all to himself, so he kept them in the dark. He just told them I could talk my way into or out of any situation.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t lying.”

“Why didn’t you use your powers on them? Your stepfather and your ex.”

“I did, but it often backfired.”

“In what way?”

“My stepfather put the fear of God in me when he figured out that I’d once given him a directive. And Ross had safeguards in place.”

“What kind of safeguards?”

“He figured out pretty quickly how it all worked. When I give a directive, it displaces time. Throws you off balance. The target senses it when they snap out of it and things aren’t quite how they left them. So, Ross slowly figured out other ways to control me.” She looked up and impaled him with an accusing glare. “Like you will probably try to do the minute you come up with a plan.”

“You clearly don’t know me very well.”

“Don’t tell me, you’re not that kind of guy?”

“No, I’m just really bad at making plans, so you’re safe with me. I try not to think that far ahead. What was the leverage?”

“The leverage?”

“You said earlier he had leverage. That’s how he controlled you. What was it?”

“Oh, my sister.” Her eyes instantly shimmered with emotion. “If I didn’t do what he wanted, he threatened to put her in the hospital. He wouldn’t kill her. That would defeat the purpose. But he would make sure she spent several days in intensive care.” A bitter laugh escaped her at the thought. “Not that he would do it himself. He wasn’t only a thief. He was a coward of the lowest form. He would have his cronies do it so he couldn’t be implicated.”

“What did he have you do?”

She huffed out a breath and shook her head, the memories clearly unpleasant. “At first, it was little things. Get him out of a speeding ticket. Convince a cashier to give him a carton of cigarettes. Tell one of his cronies to take money out of the MC president’s safe for him.”

“I take it the demands got worse over time?”

“Much. He was worse than my stepfather in some ways. And he had big plans. He wanted me to con older adults out of their life savings.

“Classy.”

“I thought so. He was researching who to target, and all the while, I was having a complete mental breakdown.”

Michael fought the urge to hunt the man down right then and there. First things first.

“I started planning, too,” she continued. “How to keep my sister safe while getting him thrown in prison. I planned to set him up. I had a detective waiting in the wings. Then something horrible happened. The clubhouse was raided, and the higher-ups began suspecting Ross.”

“Did he do it?”

“Not personally, but he was behind it. He fed a rival club member information about the layout of the clubhouse and how to get into the safe and weapons cache. He wanted to overthrow the Bandits’ president, but some of the club members caught on to the fact that he was an absolute snake. He began worrying that his patsy would get caught and snitch on him, so he tried to get me to order the man to jump off a roof. That’s when I knew I had to get away.”

“Did you?”

“Get away?”

“Order the man to jump to his death.”

She gasped softly and gaped at him. “I would never. I refused to be an accomplice to murder. I don’t even know if it’s possible. Self-preservation is a powerful thing.”

Good for her, but… “How did Ross take that?”

She lowered her head and absently rubbed her arm. It didn’t take a genius to know he’d hurt her. “Not well, but he gave in. I knew he was just biding his time. He had big dreams, and becoming the president of the North Carolina chapter was one of them. But he told me a couple of people had to die before that could happen.”

“Sounds like you got out just in time,” Michael said, straining to keep his tone neutral.

“By the skin of my teeth.”

As he listened to Izzy’s story, his breaths grew shallow as memories of his mother surfaced. They’d run, as well. The two of them. Not fast enough, however. Not far enough. “How did you escape him?” he asked, forcing the memories back into the filthy corners of his soul where they belonged.

“My foster sister, the only person on Earth who never used my ability to her advantage—not even when she failed a very important exam in high school—died suddenly.”

“I’m sorry, Izzy.” He picked up his chair and brought it around to the edge of the bed to be closer to her, wondering where this was going.

She didn’t seem to notice. “She was my everything,” she continued, lost in her memories. “He knew how much she meant to me and used that information for all it was worth.”

“How did she die?”

She shook out of her thoughts and offered him a smile, desperately heavy with the burden of guilt. “It was all very convenient. The timing. The conditions. I told her I was pregnant and said I was going to leave Ross as soon as I could coordinate with the detective.” She looked at Michael as though pleading for him to understand. “I never told her she was being used as leverage, but somehow, she figured it out. She must have. She was so smart that way.”

“As are you.”

She scoffed, the sound bitter in the sterile room. “Not like her. Two days after I told her about the pregnancy, she sent me a cryptic message. All emojis. A suitcase, a woman in sunglasses, a woman running, praying hands, and then about a thousand hearts followed by a poop emoji because she always sent me a poop emoji, no matter how serious the message. The next day, she died in a car accident, and I ran.” A tear managed to slide past her lashes, leaving a silvery trail down her cheek. She wiped it off. “I didn’t even go to her funeral. I knew he would be waiting for me, so I didn’t get to see my sister, my best friend, off to the netherworld.”

Michael found himself suffocating under the weight of Izzy’s grief. He couldn’t imagine how she felt. “Are you saying she killed herself to save you?”

“Possibly.” She swiped at a curl that had fallen over her eyes and tucked it behind an ear, the movement sharp with annoyance. “Probably. She had stage four pancreatic cancer. Never smoked a day in her life. Ate healthy. Ran every chance she got. It made no sense. But Ross found out about her diagnosis. He was worried he would lose his leverage, and I knew I had to tell her soon. I had no idea she’d figured it out.”

Michael couldn’t imagine what it was like to grow up with such an ability. From the way she spoke, her stepfather and ex weren’t the only people who’d used her for it. To be constantly betrayed by those she believed genuinely cared for her… No wonder she had trust issues.

“Can I ask how you robbed banks as a seven-year-old? How did you rob anything?”

“First, it was convenience stores. I would simply tell the cashier to forget us in sixty seconds, then tell them to give us all the money they had—no dye packs, of course. I will never make that mistake again. And then I told them to erase any video footage of our visit.”

“Thorough.”

“Always,” she said, almost proud. “Banks weren’t as easy. The tellers don’t usually have access to the surveillance equipment. But even when the authorities watched the videos, I imagine they were confused. The tellers wouldn’t have remembered anything about the robbery. I like to think they slept okay at night with no memory of such a traumatic event. Then again, maybe it was worse for them to not remember. To the authorities, we looked like a father and daughter just taking money out of the bank.

“Of course, that couldn’t last forever. They eventually caught on, and we ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list. Well, my stepdad did. They thought he was just using me as a prop to put the tellers at ease.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I asked an FBI agent on the case.”

“You just asked nicely, and they complied?”

She crinkled one corner of her mouth as though chastising him, a tiny dimple appearing out of nowhere to shred his heart. “I ordered her to tell me and then forget me. At my stepfather’s behest, mind you. He tracked her down to a diner in Charlotte. I just walked up to her table and did my thing.”

He sat back, shaking his head. He’d seen all manner of abilities, but this was a first. Still, Michael had a serious problem with Emma’s allergic reaction. Something wasn’t right, and they needed to get to the bottom of it. “I would love to know more, but we need to focus on one thing at a time.”

“One thing?”

“You said strange things have been happening lately. How strange?”

“Just odd things that don’t mean much alone. But they keep happening.”

“Like?”

“Someone keyed my car the other day. I have no idea who. And two weeks ago, I was almost run down in a grocery store parking lot by an old rust bucket of a Jeep. The SUV kind. Not the sporty one.”

He took out his phone to take notes. “What color?”

“Rust, mostly.” When he raised his brows in question, she added, “Gray and very beat-up. It was at Smith’s. The one on Cerrillos.”

“Got it. What else?”

“Well, I keep losing tire pressure, but when I take it in, they swear I don’t have a leak. Just strange events that don’t mean much.”

“But taken as a whole…”

“Exactly.”

They had security cameras at the complex. He would check those first. “Do you think this Ross asshat has found you?”

She breathed out a sigh filled with frustration and concern. “I don’t know. Ross isn’t much of a thinker, you know? If he’d found me, I truly believe he would’ve come for me. He wouldn’t play games. He wouldn’t risk losing me again.”

Michael nodded. “I agree.”

“Wait.” She set the completed paperwork aside and narrowed her gaze on him.

He didn’t mind in the least.

“You’re taking all of this really well.”

“All of what?”

“Me. My ability. Even Emma’s gift. You act like it’s an everyday thing. You…you believe me.”

“I’ve seen stranger things than you, Killer. And much scarier.”

She smirked. “I don’t know. I can be pretty scary.”

“Not without a Taser in your hand. What was her name?”

“Whose name?”

“Your sister’s?”

She smiled despite the gravity of the situation. It was a glorious thing, her smile. Wide and genuine, with full lips and a row of perfect teeth. That, combined with the color of her eyes, once again brought back a sense of familiarity. A longing. Did he know her from somewhere? Had he seen her in a grocery store or at a restaurant before all of this happened?

No. There was no way. He never would have forgotten those eyes.

She gazed at him, her face aglow with the memory of her sister, and said softly, “Emmaline,” pronouncing the name carefully, precisely, as though it were a precious thing.

When it dawned on him that she’d named her daughter after her sister, his heart softened even more, the hard, sharp edges threatening to melt away. But he couldn’t allow himself to get attached. His attraction was simply that, a physical draw to a beautiful woman. He didn’t want her anywhere near the compound, or the little hellion clearly trying to recruit her.

Michael noticed the phones ringing first. He turned his head toward the nurse’s desk across the hall. That alerted Izzy, and she straightened in her chair. When a strobe light began flashing in the hallway, their gazes locked for half a second before they both jumped to their feet and rushed into the hall.